What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel

by Catherine Hokin

  Her parents’ overdue arrival meant Liese was later cooking than usual and the kitchen was empty. The fug of cabbage and turnips from the other residents’ meals clung to it like a farmyard. She set to work quickly, dicing carrots and onions and the sparse shreds of meat into water to make a thin soup. She had hoped the meal would last two days. Now the day’s harvest was in the pan, she doubted it would stretch between tonight’s four waiting bowls.

  ‘Hungry, Mama. Dolly too.’

  Lottie’s eyes were wide, her attention focused on the bubbling pan.

  Liese passed her a sliver of carrot with instructions to nibble it slowly and tried not to snap as the little girl swallowed it whole.

  Their rations had shrunk to unworkable levels while the pettiness of the restrictions grew. Jews were no longer allowed fish or eggs or fruit, or anything baked beyond sawdust bread. Liese had worked round the rules for as long as she could, then the Party unleashed its newest weapon and defeated her. A yellow star to be worn where it could be seen at all times by all Jews older than six. Overnight, Liese became as visible as a blackout marking. The grocer’s wife, with a wary eye for the neighbours, no longer knew her. The black-market men tripled their prices. No one she sewed for had a mouthful to spare.

  ‘Stinky. Stop it.’

  The pan had caught while she was fretting. Liese whipped it off the stove, ignoring the heat stinging through her hand.

  ‘Back we go, poppet. Help Mummy push the doors.’

  The flat was still locked, Paul and Margarethe were late enough to make her throat clench. People disappeared now. New families bustled into the block’s suddenly vacated spaces; no one said anything about the old. There were rumours about trains leaving the city for unknown destinations, of whole areas emptied. Michael was permanently on edge. Liese had to stop listening when he began ranting, too preoccupied with the day-to-day business of survival to fret over matters outside her control.

  When the door finally opened, she was ladling out the meal, scraping the blackened bits into her own bowl.

  Another few minutes and we could have had their share.

  She managed a greeting and wished she felt guiltier. Then she saw the tears mottling Margarethe’s cheeks and her appetite fell away.

  ‘Please God you haven’t lost your jobs. Is that why you’re so late back? Because you couldn’t face me?’

  Her voice cracked over their cowering bodies. She could see their distress. She wanted to be kinder, but the thought of managing without even their meagre pay lodged a stone in her stomach. Paul opened his mouth, but whatever he was struggling to say wouldn’t leave it. Liese’s neck prickled.

  ‘Eat up the soup carefully, Lottie. Let it cool.’

  The child ignored her and continued to work through her portion with her usual efficiency.

  Keeping the door ajar, Liese waved her parents into the apartment’s one bedroom. It was cramped with three of them inside and noticeably colder than the main room, which held the only working fireplace. Liese could see her breath forming patterns in the air.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  Paul held out an envelope. Liese realised Margarethe was holding its twin.

  ‘No. Not these. That can’t be.’

  Every Jew knew what these letters meant: resettlement. A word everyone whispered and no one understood.

  ‘Why would you be singled out? Your jobs are important. Soldiers haven’t stopped needing uniforms.’

  ‘They don’t need ones made by Jews. They are letting us all go. They have brought in foreign workers, from Poland and Austria, as skilled at sewing as any of us.’

  Paul finally sat down on the sagging double bed, settling Margarethe beside him. He unbuttoned her coat and eased off her too-tight gloves as gently as if she was a child.

  Liese looked down – the intimacy between them had grown no easier to watch – and opened the letters. They were identical, neatly typed, politely worded. Both carried the heading she knew she would find, Notice of Resettlement, and tomorrow’s date. Liese didn’t know what her parents had been told about when they would leave; she couldn’t begin to imagine asking.

  ‘Go to the table. Eat.’

  They didn’t need telling twice.

  Liese waited until they were devouring the now cold soup before unfolding the rest of the envelopes’ contents. They were instructions, they covered two sheets and they were a model of clarity. The exact time the Elfmanns were due to present themselves at the Levetzowstraβe collection point was noted at the top of the first page. That was followed by the items they were allowed to take, listed alphabetically, as if anyone still had a detailed list of possessions left to them. Last of all was the number of bags permitted and how these were to be labelled, including the one for cash and jewellery which was to be surrendered on arrival. The second page was an inventory with space to itemise and value every item in the apartment, an amount that would be ‘set against the cost of your journey, with any discrepancies owing’. It was the Kristallnacht reparations system rolled out on an industrial scale.

  Liese folded the papers back up, trying to stay calm as she returned to the main room. Lottie had gone back to her doll and wasn’t listening to the adults. She sat down at the table and realised she had immediately started picking at its splinters, something she was always telling Lottie not to do.

  ‘Did anyone say when or where you’re going?’

  ‘We know it is tomorrow. They were precise about that. As to the place, Litzmannstadt is all we were told. It might be a city in Poland; no one was sure.’

  Paul’s voice was so drained, his shoulders so slumped, Liese wanted to fling her arms round him. As she moved to do it, Margarethe began to cry. Not in the showy, accusatory way Liese was used to, but lifelessly, with fat silent tears that poured like raindrops down an empty building. Paul pulled her up, covered her hair in kisses and led her back to the bedroom. Liese followed, although neither of them had asked her to.

  ‘Don’t, my darling, please.’

  Paul settled Margarethe on the bed and wrapped his arms round her.

  ‘Perhaps this move will be a happier one. No more slaving. A proper apartment. And we will be together; we got our letters at the same time, so we can be sure of that. What can possibly be so bad if we two are together? What more do we need?’

  Margarethe burrowed into him. Paul held her so tight there wasn’t a space between their slumped bodies. Neither heard the knock that pulled Liese, blinking, away.

  ‘The notices have gone out to all Jews still working in the clothing factories in Mitte. The news only just got through to us.’

  Michael hugged her briefly and reached down for Lottie, who had wrapped his legs in a vice-like grip.

  ‘Here you go, Trouble.’

  He produced a square of chocolate from his pocket that danced Lottie, squealing with delight, back to Dolly and the bed. Liese stayed where she was, in the shelter of his arm. He smelled of clean rain and fresh paint; she could have breathed him in for hours.

  ‘Where are they?’

  Liese nodded to the bedroom door. Paul had closed it as soon as she left. She wondered how quickly they had forgotten her. She was glad when Michael squeezed her hand and pulled her wandering thoughts back.

  ‘I can’t do anything to stop this, Liese. I’m sorry. Once the names go on a list, trying to make anyone disappear is too dangerous.’

  Liese sat back down. The scant drops of soup her parents had been too tired to scavenge had congealed and grown sharp-smelling. Her stomach heaved.

  ‘You’ve done your best; I’m grateful for it. But you know as well as I do that they could never have disappeared, list or no list. All the moving, the changing names, the attention to detail a life below the radar needs: they don’t have the patience, or the capacity. They are helpless; they always have been. Without me, God knows what would have happened to them by now; not that they care what I’ve sacrificed for them. Not that they care about anything beyond themse
lves.’ She tried not to sound bitter but her father’s dismissal – what can possibly be so bad if we two are together? what more do we need? – stung.

  ‘And now they no longer need you. You can go into hiding and be safe.’

  Liese stared at Lottie, who had fallen into a chocolate-smeared sleep. She wanted to believe him, but what had really changed?

  ‘I don’t know if that’s true, Michael, no matter how much you want it to be. How can I hide with her? It’s different for you. You can run around Berlin like a shadow. If I was on my own, I’d come with you gladly, but I’m not. You can’t take a child into that level of danger. Or, at least, I can’t.’

  He grabbed her hand so tightly, she couldn’t twist away.

  ‘Can’t doesn’t work anymore; I shouldn’t have let it before. Listen to me. Paul and Margarethe have no choice: they have to do what the letters tell them and go. When they do, the Gestapo will send their squads round. They will empty the apartment and reallocate it. If you’re here when the soldiers arrive, they will take you and they will take Lottie. You won’t be able to bargain with them. They will have no interest in anything beyond the fact that you are Jewish and taking up a living space they now count as theirs. And if you aren’t here, they’ll keep looking. You registered; they know you exist.’

  Liese’s head swam at the thought of uniformed or leather-coated thugs anywhere near her daughter. But to run? To slip under the surface and join the ‘submarine people’, as Michael called them, and live like a fugitive? To expose Lottie to God knows what kind of an existence that would entail? It was as unimaginable as jumping into a bottomless pit. There was only one alternative she could think of, although it wasn’t one she wanted to choose.

  ‘Maybe I should do what they want and go with my parents? Would it be so bad, Michael, really? To start somewhere else? Surely resettlement anywhere would be better, easier to bear, than trying to manage hand-to-mouth like this?’

  His face looked twice as old as his years.

  ‘You say resettlement like they’re offering you a villa in the country. You know that’s not the case. What’s happening tomorrow is a deportation; use that word and it sounds far less friendly. The one leaving tomorrow is the third from Berlin in a month. No one has heard from anyone who was sent out on the previous two. The destination they give is always the same, Litzmannstadt, but no one knows exactly where, or what, that is. Except that it’s in Poland, where all our reports say the Jews have been corralled into ghettoes, where—’

  He stopped.

  Liese glanced at the closed bedroom door and knew she didn’t want him to continue, and couldn’t let him stop.

  ‘Tell me. If you want me to hide out in Berlin and put my daughter in the kind of danger an illegal life would involve, you have to tell me it all. I have to make the best choice.’

  When he began again, he spoke too quickly for Liese to interrupt.

  ‘There are rumours coming out of the East about massacres. Of trains that leave Germany packed full and arrive empty, and no one knows where the passengers are, except other rumours report thousands of Jews shot and their bodies burned or buried in pits. We’re hearing about ghettoes in Poland, in Warsaw and Krakow, which are thick with starvation and disease. Where people are walled off with no medical care, even for the children and the old. Of so-called labour camps where the inmates are worked to death. The Nazis are sending us where no one can follow, or see what they do. They are killing us, Liese. What we suspected was always their plan is happening.’

  There wasn’t a sound from the adjoining room, or from the bed where Lottie lay spreadeagled like a starfish. There wasn’t a sound from the streets outside. The world was as silent as if it had stopped turning.

  ‘You can’t save them, Liese. You can save her.’

  It hadn’t stopped turning, it was unravelling and Liese couldn’t see which thread to follow. If she stayed and the Gestapo came, there would be no second chance. If she ran, chance would be all she had. Whatever she did, her parents were lost. Whatever she did, there was no guarantee she could keep Lottie safe, which was surely her only job. But she could try. And her parents had each other, which, as her father had made clear, was all they had ever wanted.

  Lottie stirred in her sleep and pulled her doll closer. She was so small, she looked like she could fold into Liese’s pocket. Liese moved to the bed and wrapped her arms round her daughter. Lottie curled round her in return like a vine. Their completeness took Liese’s breath away.

  ‘Not tonight.’

  She shook her head as Michael started to argue.

  ‘They’re going into heaven only knows what tomorrow and they’re still my parents. I need to be here in the morning – to say my goodbyes. Whatever we’ve been to each other, whether they need me to do it or not, the family we once called ourselves deserves that much.’

  ‘And then you’ll come? No more excuses?’

  Liese lay against the pillow, cradling her daughter.

  She could imagine a life without her parents, although that hurt more than she had words for. It was impossible to imagine a world that didn’t spin around Lottie. The love that bound her to her daughter was as strong as iron; it would stand against whatever challenges were coming.

  She kissed Lottie’s soft hair and nodded at Michael.

  ‘And then I’ll come.’

  Nine

  Liese

  Berlin, November 1942–September 1943

  Live your cover story, lose yourself. Trust no one. Stay alert.

  In the year since Paul and Margarethe had been relocated and Liese and Lottie had begun living underground, the Nazi’s determination to rid Berlin of its Jews had intensified. Their lives were never still. Liese had worn four different names in twelve months and had no doubt that the fifth one was coming. The number of rooms she and Lottie had bounced through had grown too long to count. Michael had led them in and out of basements and attics and cramped carved-up spaces the length of Treptow and Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg since he had pulled Liese from Cuxhavener Straβe, clutching Lottie and weeping. The sight of her parents walking away, hand in hand, bent into each other and not looking back, had broken her more than she could have imagined.

  ‘I can’t do it. I can’t let them go like this. What if I never see them again?’

  She had thrust Lottie into Michael’s arms and run down the corridor, screaming at them to stop, deaf to Lottie’s frightened cries and Michael’s furious shouts.

  ‘You have to stay. You have to. I’ll work something out; I’ll hide you.’

  ‘And what will happen then?’

  Paul’s face when he turned at her pleading was grey and so aged, Liese would have taken him for a stranger if she had passed him in the street. ‘They will find us. And you will pay. You and Lottie. We can’t live with that.’

  ‘It won’t happen, it won’t!’

  When he reached out and stroked her hair, Liese thought her heart would stop.

  ‘We haven’t been much use to you.’ He shook his head as she tried to speak. ‘It’s best I finally face the truth, even if it is too late to mend things. We thought the world would always be ours, you see. And we’re not equipped for what it’s become. Your mother is my centre, Liese; Lottie is yours. Let us go; keep what matters safe.’

  He turned then, tucked Margarethe’s arm into his and walked away. Liese didn’t call out again; Paul didn’t look back. When Michael picked her up from the floor where she had fallen, she didn’t fight him.

  She had no memory of leaving the tenement, or of the first scrambled-into apartment he left them in. None of the places Michael had taken them to since were in areas she knew; most of their dark streets continued to remain a mystery. Every move was made at night and not every apartment was safe to leave, no matter how much Lottie begged for ‘outsides’. Every day dawned so fraught with danger, Liese’s nerves were permanently knotted. But at least, as she constantly reminded herself, every day dawned. Even if too many brough
t with them threats she hadn’t known were there to fret over.

  ‘You have to trust no one and you have to stay vigilant. The Nazis aren’t our only problem. There are catchers everywhere: turncoat Jews turning us in. They work for the Gestapo, hunting down illegals. Some of them are better at the job than their bosses.’

  ‘Why do they do it?’

  Michael had shrugged, clearly uncomfortably aware how hollow his answer was.

  ‘Who knows. Money, I suppose. Or freedom to live on the surface unmolested, or to save their own families from the deportation trains. Whatever their reasoning, they deserve a bullet for betraying the rest of us. We’ve gathered what information we can; one day there’ll be a reckoning. Stella Kübler is the worst, but she mostly targets the men dumb enough to fall for her smiles and her flattery. Most of them you can’t spot, and that’s where the trouble lies. If anyone looks twice at you, or makes an approach and acts like they know you, break eye contact at once and get out of sight.’

  There were so many rules; all, Michael insisted, equally essential for survival. Liese, determined not to put a foot wrong, memorised every one of them until they ran through her head on an endless loop.

  ‘Stay in if you can. If you must go out, always look smart and spotless, whatever the challenge of finding hot water and soap. Map every street for doorways and alleys that might offer a bolthole. Be confident. Belong. Walk head up and shoulders square. Carry a visible copy of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Party-loving newspaper. Never run, unless someone is pointing a gun at you and then running will be a waste of time. Never look frightened, or dirty, or out of place. Never look like how they imagine a Jew.’

  Not that, given the hateful distorted images the Party peddled, any real person ever could. That didn’t matter. Posture, clothes, colouring: everything could be used as a weapon; everything had to be rethought.